Travel horror stories: Getting eaten alive by bedbugs and having the staff blame you for it

This story didn't happen to me but rather to someone that I met along the way. I initially started talking to them because she was absolutely covered in little bumps. She looked like she had been attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes while she was asleep but in fact she had discovered some bedbugs in her hostel about a week prior. She told me the other details and I have some advice to offer people because of her experience.

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For starters, as a budget-traveler, if you travel any sort of long-duration, it isn't a question of if you are going to encounter bedbugs, it is a question of when. These little critters are all over the world and just like a lot of other insects, they are extremely resilient and can survive almost anything. I have seen them in dozens of countries and while I will choose to check out if I notice them, I don't necessarily even think that it reflects terribly negatively on the establishment they are in provided they actually do care that they are there. I know from first hand experience how terribly and nearly impossible it is to get rid of this issue and can understand why a family-run place cannot afford the really expensive treatment necessary to get totally rid of them. However, if the place deflects and tries to blame you for it that is not ok.

The woman's story that I met went like this: She was staying in a place and though she was getting bit in her room, then a few days later she started to develop bite marks all over her body, then she actually saw some of the bugs while they were in the middle of their job. She caught them, and then showed them to the front desk staff in what she described was a covert way. They exploded on her and accused her of bringing them into the hostel. They tried to charge her for infesting their guesthouse but here is why I know the staff were completely wrong for what they did.

If someone does transport a bedbug or two it is going to be precisely that - a couple of them. This amount of bedbugs are simply not capable of attacking her body the way that it was. I mean she was completely covered in bits from neck to toe. Unless someone was intentionally transporting hundreds of the things there is no chance that they would be able to do this much damage to her. Also, while these critters do actually replicate quite quickly, the few days that she was in the hostel is not anywhere near enough time for them to reach the levels necessary to put her in the state that she was in.

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A bedbug with an empty stomach is nearly impossible to spot. They have no coloration in their bodies. It is only after they have fed that they take on the red color because, you guessed it! The blood in their prey is also red. These things are only a few millimeters in diameter and are only capable of drinking a very small amount of your blood. They will have to feed in multiple places because unlike mosquitoes they cannot penetrate the skin very far and have to move on once the blood coagulates. It's probably silly that I know so much about these things but as someone that has been traveling to mostly developing countries for decades, I have a ton of experience with them.

Back to the situation with the woman traveler. She rightly refused to pay whatever it was that the staff were accusing her of and I think that this is merely a tactic that the business uses in order to avoid responsibility for the infestation. This young woman had done nothing wrong other than to stay at the wrong guesthouse. She pointed this out to potential travelers on review sites and I think that is warranted not because the place had bedbugs, but because they refused to take any responsibility for it. Because of their attitude, that place will likely never achieve not having them.

So this poor girl not only had bites all over her body but she also didn't get a refund and was treated very badly by the staff. I would tell you the name of the place but I have been monitoring it and it went out of business - rightfully so - many years ago. Just know that it was in Guatemala and lots of places there have bedbugs.

She was kind of traumatized by this situation and it could have been made a lot better if the staff had just been kinder and accepted that they were the ones at fault. There was no need to cause a scene and if they had been cool, the girl likely wouldn't have gone after them online the way that she did.

If you would like to avoid this insect being a part of your life I'll tell you something that you can do when checking in to see if the place potentially has them in the rooms.

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When you are checking in go to the top end of the bed and carefully lift up the sheet to expose the top corner where your head would be if you were sleeping on it. Look under and around the corner area where the two sides of a mattress come together on almost all mattresses ever made. If you see small black dots in this area, even if there are no bugs present, then this place probably has bedbugs now or did recently. Even if they got rid of the bugs, if they didn't have the wherewithal to get ride of the black stains then this place likely doesn't care as much as they should about preventing this sort of thing. Those black dots are insect poo poo. Despite the fact that bedbugs live a rather disgusting life they don't like to crap where they live so they will exit their little cave for the sake of relieving themselves. If the mattress top corners are clean, there is a really good chance that this room is clear of them. Bedbugs can live almost anywhere but they are a lazy insect that will choose to live as close to their food source as possible.

The good news is that even if you do get bit while traveling, only around 50% of people show any allergic reaction to it. I am one of the people that doesn't. This girl must be quite allergic to them because she just looked awful and I am sure that put quite the damper on her travels. Also, bedbugs do not carry any diseases regardless of the state of the people that they bit previous to you. This is in stark contrast to mosquitoes that regularly spread disease. It's a good thing that bedbugs cannot spread disease because if they could I think a very large portion of the world's population would get wiped out.